Ukrainere i kø for Svalbard

300 av 400 personer som arbeider for det russiske selskapet Arctic Coal Trust i Barentsburg, er fra Ukraina. Og køen av ukrainere som vil arbeide på Svalbard er lang, melder New York Times i en fargerik reportasje: 

While scientists up here in the high Arctic monitor global warming by studying the movement of polar bears, ice floes and glaciers, Nikolai Mikitenko tracks the meltdown in Ukraine, the land of his birth more than 2,000 miles away, through the migration of desperate coal miners.

As the director of the Arctic Coal Trust, a state-owned Russian company that has mined in this frigid Norwegian-controlled wilderness since the 1930s, Mr. Mikitenko needs workers who are willing to move to an ice-entombed island with no trees and, for six months of the year, no sunlight.

Ukraine’s economic ruin and political tumult, however, have ensured that Mr. Mikitenko never has a shortage of labor, creating a deep pool of miners hungry for work, no matter where.

“There is a long line of people who want to work here,” he said, waving a list of new recruits, all of them from Ukraine. “If they could find jobs at home and feed their families, do you think they would come to this place?”

Les hele reportasjen her.